Palace base­ment frees up space for Kate’s baby No 3

THE DUKE and Duchess of Cam­bridge will have more space in Kens­ing­ton Palace when their third child ar­rives next spring.

Kens­ing­ton and Chelsea coun­cil has of­fi­cially given the green light to con­tro­ver­sial plans to ‘free up the palace suites for the Royal Fam­ily’ by re­lo­cat­ing staff of­fices into a two­s­torey base­ment be­hind the Orangery res­tau­rant in the palace grounds.

There were 19 ob­jec­tions to the £24mil­lion ex­ten­sion, be­cause two­s­torey ‘ice­berg’ base­ments are usu­ally banned in the bor­ough. Lo­cals called the pro­pos­als ‘shoddy’ and ac­cused plan­ners of be­ing ‘be­daz­zled by courtiers’. But the coun­cil made an ‘ex­cep­tion’ for Kens­ing­ton Palace, and ap­proved its plans on Thurs­day.

The ex­ten­sion will be funded by the char­ity His­toric Royal Palaces, which sub­mit­ted the plans in March. A spokesman said: ‘It is im­por­tant we plan ahead and con­sider long-term ac­com­mo­da­tion needs at the palace.’